Lineker adverts hasten end of Golden Wonder

Golden Wonder, one of the great names of the British snack food industry, has collapsed into administration, blaming the relentless competition from rival Walkers crisps.

The company was the grandfather of the industry, bringing the nation cheese and onion flavour crisps, but it failed to keep pace with the innovation of its rivals. It has been particularly hard hit in the past decade by Walkers' slick advertisements, which have featured the former footballer Gary Lineker and other celebrities.

Up to 850 jobs at the firm, based in Market Harborough, Leics, are at risk. The administrators, Kroll, say factories at Corby and Scunthorpe will carry on trading until further notice while they try to find a buyer.

The company's collapse, announced yesterday, upset many in the industry. "It's tremendously sad. Golden Wonder is a wonderful brand name that's been around since the 1940s," said Steve Chandler, the director general of the Snack, Nut and Crisp Manufacturers' Association.

Related Articles

But rivals said the collapse was inevitable. Paul Saxby, the managing director of crisp manufacturer Jonathan Crisp, said: "How on earth do you compete with the marketing might of Walkers?"

The US food giant PepsiCo entered the UK market in 1989, when it bought the Smiths and Walkers brands. Since then it has pursued an aggressive policy of expansion, and now controls 45 per cent of the crisp market.

Golden Wonder's advertising slogan - "Where a crisp is a crisp" - failed to capture the imagination. The company was forced to sell the Wotsits brand, which provided most of its profits, to Walkers in 2002.

A new set of owners, headed by a Yemeni conglomerate, took control of the company, but, according to analysts, failed to invest enough. Golden Wonder racked up losses of nearly £11 million in 2004 on turnover of £88 million. Not only did it fail to compete with Walkers, it also failed to adapt to a changing market. The snack food industry, worth £2 billion in the UK, has not grown over the last five years and fell three per cent last year. The only growth areas have been the premium end of the market, dominated by Jonathan Crisp, Burt's and Kettle Chips, and healthy snacks, especially cereal bars.

Golden Wonder also supplied supermarkets with their own-label crisps - a tactic eschewed by PepsiCo.

The company's brands, including Wheat Crunchies and Nik Naks, as well as Golden Wonder, may be bought from the administrators but it is uncertain whether the factories will survive.

Golden Wonder was founded by an enterprising Edinburgh baker who starting making potato crisps after finishing his morning's work, and has been at the forefront of most crisp developments since then, until its luck run out yesterday.

Mr Chandler said: "Golden Wonder was a pioneer in the industry. As a boy I can remember buying crisps that were scooped from a glass jar and put into glassine paper bags."

Golden Wonder was the first company to replace these grease-proof paper bags with plastic bags, extending the crisps' shelf life.